Furrae/DMFA CRPG project (modellers/concept artists wanted)

[Rowne]

That's why I've shut up on the topic, they seem to have gone full steam ahead with a particular idea and more power too them because it's actually looking promising and I don't want to divide their attention.

Seriously, to the ladies and gents planning this, good luck and I hope something comes of it.  Oh and as a side-note, that was a very nifty model of Dan's head, it was close to what cel-shading is, the only suggestion I'd have is to shift the colouration from polygonal light-reflection to a more raytraced appearance.

Anyway, nothing more to add but I shall be reading!

[Aldoun]

While I wont be able to devote any major amount of time to this once school starts up again I'm willing to devote at least some time to helping out here. I'll be able to help out with anything done in writing, from bios to random tid-bits of text or old journal entries I can probably do it.

[Tapewolf]

And now for the current team status (not binding in any case, mind you):
* Character modeller(s) - TKG, Jack McSlay
* Generic modeller(s) - Aridas Soulfire (and Shadrok, perhaps?)
* Texture artist(s) - JP Morris, Jack McSlay
* 2D/sprite artist(s) - JP Morris, Jack McSlay
* World designer(s) - JP Morris, Aridas Soulfire, Tezkat, Jack McSlay
* Sound producer(s) - JP Morris, Aridas Soulfire
* Music composer(s) - TKG, Aridas Soulfire, Jack McSlay
* Story/script writer(s) - JP Morris, Gareeku, Jack McSlay
* Voice actor(s) - Tezkat, Gareeku, Jack McSlay

Okay, a couple of points with that list - the things you've got me down for are things I could do - I can't concentrate on all of them.

Art isn't really my strong point.  Where sprites are concerned I've only really worked on small ones (32x32) which would be okay for in-game icons, inventory symbols and so forth but not much else.
Likewise textures, although I'm a little more confident with those, particularly organic textures such as grass, wood and so forth.

World design is going to depend on the editor and how the world is actually assembled - So far I'm only really happy with toplogy-based systems like Doom, Duke3D and to a lesser extent Crystalspace.

The only things I can really make promises about are writing - editing and internal consistency checks at the very least, and hopefully some actual writing as well, although the Muse can be fussy as I'm sure we all know.

As for sound design, I already have an effects library which I assembled for my own game, some of these have been reused in the Radio Project, so that's not going to be a huge burden.  I can definitely contribute some music as well, maybe original, failing that some of the library stuff I wrote for my game and the Radio Project.  But we're some way off the point where that will be useful.

Add me to the voice actors - that's not going to be a significant problem either.  I don't know where or when we're going to be set, but I have done the voicing for Merlitz and Dark Pegasus in the Radio Project plus a few minor characters.

http://www.jpmorris.force9.co.uk/music/dmfa/zipit.wav.mp3 - Pegasus
http://dmfa.it-he.org/dmfa/merl_266b.wav.mp3 - Merl

This is just some of what Tezkat can do:
http://www.jpmorris.force9.co.uk/music/dmfa/Tezkat_-_Dr._Ink_525-527.mp3 - Ink
http://dmfa.it-he.org/dmfa/dmfa_269.wav.mp3 - Jyrras (also with Jack McSlay as Pyroduck)

One important thing we need to thrash out is where the game is going to be set.  Amber hasn't so far shown us a map of Furrae.  If we just go off and put Lost Lake here, Zinvfth there and so forth, we're going to end up with something almost - but not quite - entirely unlike DMFA.

Again I refer to the notion of setting the game in a part of the world which Amber has not defined - links to SAIA and Lost Lake or Zinfvth could be added magically or by mass-transit (i.e. changing map).  If we set the thing in Ha-Khun or one of our other invented locations we have a lot more freedom to place things.

I'm happy to keep discussing this, although to be honest it's kind of academic until the engine/worldbuilder is running to a point at which we can poke it around and see what it can do.

[Aridas]

* Generic modeller(s) - Aridas Soulfire (and Shadrok, perhaps?)

I said I suck at that and probably wouldn't do it, but maybe if there's a description of what these kind of jobs would possibly be, I might actually try.

[tkg]

Seems like you guys are really getting into this! Just make sure you don't spread yourselves too thin on this though.

We already have some overlapping qualities in our team, so that can hopefully be avoided

Seriously, to the ladies and gents planning this, good luck and I hope something comes of it.  Oh and as a side-note, that was a very nifty model of Dan's head, it was close to what cel-shading is, the only suggestion I'd have is to shift the colouration from polygonal light-reflection to a more raytraced appearance.

Thanks, pulling together a project of this scale isn't going to be neither easy nor quick, but I'll do my best (and I'm sure others will too). As long as it is fun to do (for the most part), and we don't push ourselves too hard, I don't see any real obstacles along the path.
I'm not known to all the different cartoon-rendering shaders that exist, but I'll try a bunch of them and see what looks best. The shots I made of his head are taken directly from the modeller (not inside the game), and the cel-shader is just put together by mixing two falloff-materials together... I'm pretty sure I could make it look better in-game, perhaps not so much with my current video card, though

While I wont be able to devote any major amount of time to this once school starts up again I'm willing to devote at least some time to helping out here. I'll be able to help out with anything done in writing, from bios to random tid-bits of text or old journal entries I can probably do it.

Every bit of effort helps, so you're more than welcome

And now for the current team status (not binding in any case, mind you):
* Character modeller(s) - TKG, Jack McSlay
* Generic modeller(s) - Aridas Soulfire (and Shadrok, perhaps?)
* Texture artist(s) - JP Morris, Jack McSlay
* 2D/sprite artist(s) - JP Morris, Jack McSlay
* World designer(s) - JP Morris, Aridas Soulfire, Tezkat, Jack McSlay
* Sound producer(s) - JP Morris, Aridas Soulfire
* Music composer(s) - TKG, Aridas Soulfire, Jack McSlay
* Story/script writer(s) - JP Morris, Gareeku, Jack McSlay
* Voice actor(s) - Tezkat, Gareeku, Jack McSlay

Okay, a couple of points with that list - the things you've got me down for are things I could do - I can't concentrate on all of them.

* Generic modeller(s) - Aridas Soulfire (and Shadrok, perhaps?)

I said I suck at that and probably wouldn't do it, but maybe if there's a description of what these kind of jobs would possibly be, I might actually try.

Note that this list shows what you are able to do (even in the slightest degree) or have shown some interest in, not necessarily what you're going to end up doing... maybe I should make it a point-based list instead, where you could be assigned points (on a scale of 1-3) for each role according to how much you most likely are going to contribute at the various aspects of development. That way we can have an overview on how to distribute the workload throughout the team. It won't be carved in stone though, so changes can always be made underway.

And Aridas, generic modelling can be anything from modelling a chair or a table, to create weaponry and wands and such... quite a broad field there, but when we get ourselves more organized, I'll try to create a system where various jobs can be up for grabs (if two people wants to do the same thing, there's nothing in the way of using both models in the game, so that shouldn't be a problem).

Art isn't really my strong point.  Where sprites are concerned I've only really worked on small ones (32x32) which would be okay for in-game icons, inventory symbols and so forth but not much else.

(snip)

Add me to the voice actors - that's not going to be a significant problem either.  I don't know where or when we're going to be set, but I have done the voicing for Merlitz and Dark Pegasus in the Radio Project plus a few minor characters.

I'll keep that in mind, then.

One important thing we need to thrash out is where the game is going to be set.  Amber hasn't so far shown us a map of Furrae.  If we just go off and put Lost Lake here, Zinvfth there and so forth, we're going to end up with something almost - but not quite - entirely unlike DMFA.

Again I refer to the notion of setting the game in a part of the world which Amber has not defined - links to SAIA and Lost Lake or Zinfvth could be added magically or by mass-transit (i.e. changing map).  If we set the thing in Ha-Khun or one of our other invented locations we have a lot more freedom to place things.

I'm all for the freedom to do things as we like, though I guess I'll leave the exact details of where to go with it for you world-planners to discuss

I'm happy to keep discussing this, although to be honest it's kind of academic until the engine/worldbuilder is running to a point at which we can poke it around and see what it can do.

In not too long I'm going to put up a feature list of its current functionalities, as well as the ones that are currently in progress or at the planning stage. I was supposed to do this yesterday, but I didn't get around to it. Hopefully it will give some insight into the matter

[Damien Holtz]

I'd love to provide what little I can, if I'm wanted.

[Jack McSlay]

as for my role I think i'd actually sign initially for all of them, and then I'd focus on the areas that have a higher demand due to the lack of personal.

but I'd like to have a lock on script/story and voice acting for now

[tkg]

I'd love to provide what little I can, if I'm wanted.

I don't see a reason why not
What position(s) would you like to be put up on?

as for my role I think i'd actually sign initially for all of them, and then I'd focus on the areas that have a higher demand due to the lack of personal.

but I'd like to have a lock on script/story and voice acting for now

No problem - I'll keep that in mind as I update the list.



I recently uploaded the project details onto my website, which explains the current and planned functionalities of both the game engine and the world builder (albeit in a quite technical manner). Most features on that list are actually completed, more or less - the status of the ones that either are still in progress or haven't got off the "drawing board" yet can be seen in the parenthesis behind them.

This is not the complete list of features by a long shot, as many of them still exist only as vague ideas - for example, there is no mention of any AI system, which obviously will be a crucial part of the game logic. These will be added later on as I get to them. Also note that I've not yet settled on exactly how to handle the different files that will be used by the engine either, so I excluded that part as well.

-> Here <- is a link to the actual document (you should probably skip to the bottom part of it for the more interesting stuff )

The different element editors makes out the biggest bulk of what's mainly left to code if one were to consider the world builder as fully usable. Granted, if I'm continuing to make steady progress, it should be done in perhaps a couple of weeks or so, give or take a few days. The game engine itself, however, is going to take much longer than that... not that we are in absolute need of a version 1.0 to run some playtesting in it, anyhow

[Nex]

and I found this topic just now!?!?

I can't do much to help, just wish y'all the best of luck with this!

[Damien Holtz]

I'd love to provide what little I can, if I'm wanted.

I don't see a reason why not
What position(s) would you like to be put up on?

Well, if I'm to be honest, I don't have very much experience with anything concerning this type of thing. I'm told I'm talented at writing, I suppose I could do dialogue/script or something, if it's needed (or help, if anyone's already on that).

What type of game is it gonna be? RPG or something? Or have you said that already and I'm just too stupid to see it?

[tkg]

I'd love to provide what little I can, if I'm wanted.

I don't see a reason why not
What position(s) would you like to be put up on?

Well, if I'm to be honest, I don't have very much experience with anything concerning this type of thing. I'm told I'm talented at writing, I suppose I could do dialogue/script or something, if it's needed (or help, if anyone's already on that).

What type of game is it gonna be? RPG or something? Or have you said that already and I'm just too stupid to see it?

That decision hasn't really been made yet (the genre of the game has hardly been discussed at all), but it will surely be a 3D game in any case, seeing as it is supposed to run in my homebrew game engine (when I eventually get it done). As long as it doesn't end up as a shooter, I'm fine with it, but I would definitely vote for it to be of the sandbox-type of RPGs myself - I just love that freedom to do whatever you please in those kind of games

[Blazehawk]

I'll help with the writing-type stuff too, if you need me.

[Damien Holtz]

Aight, so can I help with the script things? 

[Tapewolf]

Aight, so can I help with the script things? 

We haven't settled on a script language yet, but..  oh, you meant storyboarding. :twisted

As for the game type, I would go for RPG because they are so flexible.  Something like Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis or to some extent Ultima 9 can be played more-or-less freestyle.  If you want to go around solving puzzles, you can.  If you want to kill people or monsters, you can do that too, which should keep Gareeku happy.  In many cases it is possible to solve puzzles by killing people and stealing their keys etc (in U7 this was not intended).  And running away from the guards is such fun!

TKG, one of the things which is concerning me a little is the AI system.  Do you have a library to assist with that?  In particular, the game will need a system to plot a route from one location to another in 3D space.  With 2D games, the A-star algorithm is usually used.  Does Irrlicht provide for this too, or do you know how this is going to work?

It will be necessary both for NPC schedules and for making guards/monsters attack the player..

[Gareeku]

If you want to kill people or monsters, you can do that too, which should keep Gareeku happy.

Er, excuse me? I can do puzzles, you know. I'm not all "LOL I wanna fight".

[Tapewolf]

If you want to kill people or monsters, you can do that too, which should keep Gareeku happy.

Er, excuse me? I can do puzzles, you know. I'm not all "LOL I wanna fight".

Fine, you wanted a beat-em-up, so I assumed that's what you wanted most...

[Netami]

Gareeku's a bad liar. Just blow stuff up.

[Gareeku]

Beat 'em ups are just my favourite genres. It doesn't mean that I can't play any other genre of game.

*Blows Netami up*

[Jack McSlay]

TKG, one of the things which is concerning me a little is the AI system.  Do you have a library to assist with that?  In particular, the game will need a system to plot a route from one location to another in 3D space.  With 2D games, the A-star algorithm is usually used.  Does Irrlicht provide for this too, or do you know how this is going to work?

It will be necessary both for NPC schedules and for making guards/monsters attack the player..

*cough*waypoints*cough*

[Tapewolf]

It will be necessary both for NPC schedules and for making guards/monsters attack the player..

*cough*waypoints*cough*

Yes, but you need some kind of routing engine to guide the object between the waypoints.

(Curses.. I don't have a screenshot of JCD blowing things up spectacularly)

**EDIT**
Better late than never:


J.C. 'Groo' Denton sneaks some bombs into the stealth training course
They never found all the bits of the instructors

[Damien Holtz]

Aight, so can I help with the script things? 

We haven't settled on a script language yet, but..  oh, you meant storyboarding. :twisted

That's what it's called then?

Damn you Tapewolf! You win this time!

*cough*

Yes, RPG would work best methinks.

other than that, I got nothing. *shuts up*

[Tapewolf]

Aight, so can I help with the script things? 

We haven't settled on a script language yet, but..  oh, you meant storyboarding. :twisted

That's what it's called then?

Script means two things.  The storyline, and the system used to make the world actually work.  Here's a fragment of control script from my game:


#
# Hurt
#

function guard_hurt

# Safety check
if_not_exists current
        return
endif

# Show the blood
let splatvictim = current
call splat_blood

# Was it the player?
let suspect = current.enemy
let victim = current
call justice_assault
end


..I knew what you meant of course, but I decided it was about time to nip it in the bud before it gets really confusing.

[Jack McSlay]

Yes, but you need some kind of routing engine to guide the object between the waypoints.

(Curses.. I don't have a screenshot of JCD blowing things up spectacularly)

dunno, to my see, you can implementing a waypoint engine withour much problems after you have 3 things - find radius function, trace line function and invisible walls.

after that it's just find nearest waypoint->go to nearest waypoint->find next waypoint->go to next waypoint

[Tapewolf]

Yes, but you need some kind of routing engine to guide the object between the waypoints.

dunno, to my see, you can implementing a waypoint engine withour much problems after you have 3 things - find radius function, trace line function and invisible walls.

after that it's just find nearest waypoint->go to nearest waypoint->find next waypoint->go to next waypoint

Surely that will only work if there are no obstructions between the waypoints.  If people and other objects are solid, you'll need a way to route around them.
If the player is being persued through the town, they would just need to get a tree or well or house between them and the guards and their pursuers would be totally stuck.  If you used A-star (and I don't know if it can work in 3D-space) they would be able to route their way around the tree as a real guard would.

**EDIT**
Let's just clarify that - the guards won't use waypoints to chase the player, obviously, but the same problem applies to scheduled waypoints.  Other people might get in the way, the player might have left a chest or something in their path.

[Damien Holtz]

I know what scripting means, you insolent-- *is brutally savaged by a passing mow*

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

I'm bored, and so tired of slamming my head into the desk! Anything at all I can do?

[Jack McSlay]

Yes, but you need some kind of routing engine to guide the object between the waypoints.

dunno, to my see, you can implementing a waypoint engine withour much problems after you have 3 things - find radius function, trace line function and invisible walls.

after that it's just find nearest waypoint->go to nearest waypoint->find next waypoint->go to next waypoint

Surely that will only work if there are no obstructions between the waypoints.  If people and other objects are solid, you'll need a way to route around them.
If the player is being persued through the town, they would just need to get a tree or well or house between them and the guards and their pursuers would be totally stuck.  If you used A-star (and I don't know if it can work in 3D-space) they would be able to route their way around the tree as a real guard would.

**EDIT**
Let's just clarify that - the guards won't use waypoints to chase the player, obviously, but the same problem applies to scheduled waypoints.  Other people might get in the way, the player might have left a chest or something in their path.

an static object such as a tree or well should only be a problem if the waypoints are poorly placed, and I don't see a big problem with other entities as long as you tell the guard to keep looking for them. if you use a findradius type of function then it's not too hard for the guard to know when to dodge an object that's in the way

[Tezkat]

the shape of the head looks fine. I just think the eyes aren't too DMFA-stylish

Hmm, well... they were designed from this wallpaper (which is the one I used for reference to create the model, by the way), but I probably messed up somewhere

Well... if you're trying to draw DMFA style eyes, there are two very distinctive features of the way Amber draws them. She rarely draws black pupils; her eyes are mostly pure iris colour (though sometimes with a bit of internal shading that hints at a pupil). Next, rather than adding little dots to represent light reflection, she has a huge patch of white cutting into the iris from the outside--giving it a crescent shape--with a handful of softer highlights on the iris itself. If you include both of those features, your eyes will look very DMFAish regardless of the shape. (I tried to reproduce this effect in my mow suit avatar, which I drew during my "study Amber's style" phase last summer.  )


Incidentally, the hairstyle is wrong as well. You can't really see it in the DDR pic, but the characteristic Dan hair has the left "bang" pulled all the way back under his ear into his ponytail. Also, the reflection highlights on the eyes are pointing in different directions, which looks kinda weird.


Accuracy issues aside, however, it's a nice model. 

Oh and as a side-note, that was a very nifty model of Dan's head, it was close to what cel-shading is, the only suggestion I'd have is to shift the colouration from polygonal light-reflection to a more raytraced appearance.

More raytraced? Hmm... I don't think a photorealistic rendering style would be very appropriate for DMFA characters. Without some very sophisticated fur texturing, that would just end up looking like claymation. I also disagree with the folks that say cel shading is the way to go, mind you. Most realtime cell shaders don't look all that good, are horrible resource hogs, and would probably wind up looking too hard and flat to capture the feel of a comic like DMFA. We're not trying to reproduce a cartoon. We're trying to reproduce "cute" comic strip.

What I think we should go for is a cute 3D style similar similar to some of the more anime-ish console RPGs. I personally thought that the shading on the face turned out quite nicely in the sample image. The material settings on the hair could use some tweaking though--it looks far too plastic. We should probably do a lot of the shading and highlighting for hair in texture to preserve the stylistic feel of Amber's art. We could even go all the way to fully hand textured character shading like in Kingdom Hearts, but we'd need some pretty talented skinners to pull that off.

Surely that will only work if there are no obstructions between the waypoints.  If people and other objects are solid, you'll need a way to route around them.
If the player is being persued through the town, they would just need to get a tree or well or house between them and the guards and their pursuers would be totally stuck.  If you used A-star (and I don't know if it can work in 3D-space) they would be able to route their way around the tree as a real guard would.

A* works fine in 3D so long as you have an appropriate world representation. Most modern RPG and FPS games have the worldbuilders lay a network of pathnodes (waypoints, if you prefer, though that might carry a different connotation depending on your background) on top of their maps for the bots to use. The pathnodes are the network used for the A* search, and they can be quite finely grained webs (sometimes with nodes placed every few meters, though that of course depends on the size and complexity of the map). An interesting consequence of that design strategy, by the way, is that it offloads much of the task of making bots appear smart to the level designers. (There are human factors issues there, too; experienced FPS mapmakers can do that in their sleep, but our other worldbuilders might find it confusing.) There are also ways of autogenerating pathnodes--some better than others.

**EDIT**
Let's just clarify that - the guards won't use waypoints to chase the player, obviously, but the same problem applies to scheduled waypoints.  Other people might get in the way, the player might have left a chest or something in their path.

I don't see why mobs would need completely new movement strategies for chasing players. You want the AI to know the routes around static obstacles ahead of time anyway. I suppose you could give it access to world geometry for internode routing (navigating dynamic obstacles, taking cover, etc.) or path smoothing, though...

[Tapewolf]

Surely that will only work if there are no obstructions between the waypoints.  If people and other objects are solid, you'll need a way to route around them.
If the player is being persued through the town, they would just need to get a tree or well or house between them and the guards and their pursuers would be totally stuck.  If you used A-star (and I don't know if it can work in 3D-space) they would be able to route their way around the tree as a real guard would.

A* works fine in 3D so long as you have an appropriate world representation. Most modern RPG and FPS games have the worldbuilders lay a network of pathnodes (waypoints, if you prefer, though that might carry a different connotation depending on your background) on top of their maps for the bots to use. The pathnodes are the network used for the A* search, and they can be quite finely grained webs (sometimes with nodes placed every few meters, though that of course depends on the size and complexity of the map).

I was playing with that idea in my head when I was doing this kind of thing for IRE.  Yes, I can see that would work quite nicely.  I still say you need A* to deal with dynamic objects and concave traps. 

I don't see why mobs would need completely new movement strategies for chasing players. You want the AI to know the routes around static obstacles ahead of time anyway. I suppose you could give it access to world geometry for internode routing (navigating dynamic obstacles, taking cover, etc.) or path smoothing, though...

Perhaps I've spent too much time trapping NPCs using crates and stuff in Deus Ex - or even Ultima 7, come to that - I expect them to be able to dodge obstacles I place in their path.

U7 and Exult use A* - it allows the NPCs to work around pretty much any obstacle short of a completely enclosed trap.  I spent ages trying to work out how it was done, until a friend of mine wrote an A* implementation and it solved pretty much all the issues in IRE.

**EDIT**
To clarify, IRE works by taking a snapshot of the area surrounding the NPC, scanning the map and creating a 64x64 grid of all impassable tiles in the area (this is easy since IRE is tilebased) all the routing calculations are performed on this.  It's quite efficient.  I can see you would have to do some kind of dynamic node stuff to make [the proposed 3D engine] support dynamic obstructions though.

[Tezkat]

Well... almost all games these days use some variant of A* for pathing. Most just have the mobs check for dynamic obstacles to the next node and then look for a new route if blocked (or wait for the obstacle to get out of the way). That's where the level designer bot smarts I mentioned earlier comes into play. You regularly see mobs queued up on staircases where the designers only thought to include one path down, for instance.

It's certainly possible to give mobs some local freedom in negotiating dynamic obstacles (jumping over, squeezing around, blowing up, etc.), but that can get expensive very quickly in messy or crowded environments. I wouldn't recommend going that route without a game engine that was heavily optimized for translating world geometry into AI-friendly representations.

[Rowne]

Hm, it might not be raytracing I'm thinking of then.  It's a particular art style that's used for very stylized logos where they have smooth, glassy fades.  It looks a lot like cel-shading but considering how much I've seen of it, it looks like it might be easier to create.

I just can't think what it might be called right now.  It's a very basic form anyway, devoid of a lot of detail, which might just work for this.